


A Stitch In Time

by VorpalGirl



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Tifa Lockhart, Canon Compliant, Gen, Mental Time Travel, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Screw Destiny, The Weird Combo of Tags Is Because Time Travel, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Vincent Valentine Will Not Be Allowed To Mope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 04:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15380259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VorpalGirl/pseuds/VorpalGirl
Summary: Tifa isn't sure yet if she'll be able to Fix Everything - if she'll be able to save the future of the Planet, her father's life, or even just Cloud's sanity.What she does know, is she'll be damned if she'll let Vincent mope in a coffin when they've got Things to do.





	A Stitch In Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Up_sideand_down](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Up_sideand_down/gifts).



> To fill the prompt: "This is the open prompt. The story you've wanted to write, the art you've been wanting to make...put it here. This has always been about meeting new creators in this fandom and I want to see what you can do."

 

In the end, they had decided it  _had_ to be her.

The world was at stake. Really, truly, last-chance _at stake_.

And only one could go.

Only one shot, only one person. Because the dying Lifestream had only that much left, and even _that_ was impressive, given the number of supposed physical laws they’d have to break in the process. Laws that the Lifestream, and every ounce of Cetra wisdom in it, would normally be loath to violate, but desperate times called for desperate measures and it was, above all else, meant to _live._

Only one could go.

And she and Aerith had both agreed it couldn’t be Cloud.

Not because he might not have pulled it off —he might have succeeded; no, he probably would have, they both had enough faith in him for that— but at what _cost?_

He’d been doing so _well._ This last year or two, he’d even been _recovering_ …

...and they had no idea if he’d be able to take this without it breaking him all over again. 

But it could still only be someone out of a handful of people.

Only a handful could have been in _any_ of the right places, at _any_ of the right times...at least, within any of the times that Aerith was _sure_ the Lifestream could propel the soul and mind of the 'lucky' chosen person to.

Zack Fair might have been feasible. He would at least have wound up with access to ShinRa at sort of the right time.   
  
“But,” she had said softly. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I just —I don’t want to put _either_ of them through that, you know? It’s horrible to put _anybody_ through, I know this. I hate that anybody has to go at all, I hate that we don't have any other _options_. But...I loved him. Still do. I love them _both_ , and they’ve _both_ been through so _much_...” 

Tifa had understood.

Tifa had agreed.

And Tifa had decided, to hell with it —if it needed doing, then for once she wouldn’t rely on someone else to save the world. Not if they didn’t need to. She was done doing that.

Besides, altered timelines erasing it or not, her nerves would be absolutely _shot_  with just waiting. Shy she might sometimes be, but she was also a woman of action, a woman who got stuff _done —_ and knowing she _could_ have tried and didn’t? Would have _eaten_ at her.  
  
She knew enough, she figured, about enough things, to make the difference.  
  
She’d be in the right place, at the right time.

It made _sense._

So, she was 100% okay with this, she had decided. She could do it.   
  
She was more than willing; she was _ready.  
_

...Aerith almost didn’t go through with it.

Bless her. Infuriating, really. She knew what needed doing, and it had been _her idea._ But. Even so...

“You’re sure?” she had whispered to Tifa, at the last possible moment. And in the formless expanse of the Lifestream, where there were no true barriers between souls, her feelings bled out, brushing against the edges of Tifa’s consciousness like a wave on the seashore. 

Concern. Worry.  
  
Guilt.

_It should be me,_ part of her was thinking. _I’m so sorry,_ said another. _Why does it have to be someone I —_  
  
Tifa didn’t at this point technically have a physical body, so she couldn’t have swallowed nervously if she’d wanted to. But the ghost of a _sensation_ of doing exactly that passed through her anyway.

“Whoa,” she said. Or, said as much as she could without literal vocal chords anyway. She tried to force her tone to be as light as she could. “Hey, slow down, girl. We’ve been over this; I’m _fine_ with it.”

Aerith gave her the impression of laughing; she had probably caught her off guard.  
  
Still, remnants of that empathy remained —brushing again, albeit more softly now, at Tifa’s edges.

“Yes, I know,” Tifa said. “I didn’t say it’d be _fun._ But you’ve said you _have_ to control it from here; and we both know it’s necessary. And you know me, I’m a _big_ girl now. If I _need_ to do something, I can. Besides…”

Again, she couldn’t swallow, but she felt her mind fooling her into thinking she was.

“Yes,” Aerith said softly, and the image of her gave a rueful smile, and the impression of gently gripping her hands. “The other things you could... _fix…_ ”  
  
“For him, especially,” said Tifa.   
  
"Mmhm,"  
  
“And —for Barrett. For...you,” she said, looking down. “All the rest...”  
  
“All the rest,” Aerith agreed. 

“Right! Well,” Tifa said, and pulled herself together. Literally.  “We don’t have much time, right? So let’s get this show on the road, Flower Girl.”

Aerith grinned at her, lopsidedly. “You got it, Barkeep.”  
  
And then all was green.  
  
All was green and then all was gone, and so was she.

 

* * *

  
  
There were stars behind her eyes. A blinding pain that made her very, _very_ aware that she was corporeal again. She had to remind herself to breathe, for a moment.

But breathe she did, and she couldn’t help but notice that the air was colder than it ever was in Edge or had ever been in Midgar.

Crisper. Almost clean, in comparison.

She forced herself to tough it through the migraine for another minute or so, until at last it began to fade. And then she opened her eyes.

She was in darkness, save for a pool of faint moonlight coming in from a window to her left. Night time, then? She glanced to her right.  

Her old piano was there.

_Her old piano was there._  Which meant...she was in her room. Her _first_ one, in their original family home.

In her father’s house.

In Nibelheim. 

She swallowed, her throat feeling so dry and tight that it hurt. She was almost too nervous to accept it, but... it seemed like it had actually  _worked?_  Like they had actually _—_ that they had _done_ it? Had she really made it back?

Did she really have a chance to... _fix_ things?

It sure seemed like it so far.

She sat up, popping a few now-tightened joints. She took a few slow, deep breaths, willing herself to relax as much as she could. Okay. 

Okay.   
  
First thing first: she had to double check the date. The year. Figure out not just _where_ she was but _when._

She got out of bed, and padded her way across the room to her desk. Her dayplanner was there —time for the moment of truth.

She picked it up, and saw the year emblazoned across the cover:

_εуλ 2000_

She felt her chest tighten.

She began to flip through the used, crossed-out pages, getting increasingly nervous the longer it took. No. No! How late in the year _was_ it!?

She got almost to the end before she finally caught up with the unused months.

December.

It was _December,_ 2000.

The same month Cloud had  _—_

_—_ except.

Wait.

No. He hadn’t —not _yet_.

It wasn’t _quite_ that late in month, yet.

“Thank the gods,” she muttered, something uncoiling inside of her. She still had time.

She still had time.  
   
Time to get to work, then.  
  
  


* * *

 

She'd known what she’d need to do next. It was obvious, wasn't it?  
  
It was half the reason _she’d_ been the one who’d been sent back, half the reason she’d been sent back to _Nibelheim_ , in particular. She also knew her way around pretty darn well. It should be a piece of cake, relatively speaking.  
  
This knowledge still didn’t keep her from being creeped out by the sheer presence of the Shinra Manor, though. Especially knowing what had already transpired there —or could, or _might soon._     
  
And especially when she was knowingly and deliberately sneaking into it _by herself_ this time _.  
_  
_Oh well. Suck it up, Lockhart,_ she told herself. _If it prevents a freakin’ apocalypse and Cloud going through all that and who_ knows _what else —then you do what you need to, heebie jeebies be damned._  
  
She had thought about how the first time she’d been through here, they’d had that whole ridiculous puzzle game to go through for a code to open the blah blah —  
  
—and she had decided not to bother with any of that this time. Why go through the trouble?  
  
Instead, she brought a tool kit, and wore work gloves and sensible shoes.  
  
And brought a dust mask; that place probably hadn’t been opened in about ten years, so she doubted the housekeeping would be any better than it was last time.

The chain on the gate presented more resistance than she remembered, and she had to remind herself that she no longer had many years of martial arts training and physical exertion under her belt to beef up her arm strength.  
  
Still, it gave under the bolt cutters _eventually,_ which was what she was banking on.

“'Bout damn time,” she muttered, wiping her brow. She shoved the bolt cutters back into her bag and slipped in, wincing at the rattle of the snapped chains, the creak of the rusty gate’s hinges. But fortunately for her no one was really out at this time in the morning —so early that it technically still counted as 'late'. That had been deliberate, as she had figured _maybe_ a few creaks of old metal in the night wasn’t an unusual enough sound to draw attention in a town as old and windy as Nibelheim.

Seemed to have worked so far, anyway.

She was _really_  glad she hadn’t done this while the sun was up, though. And glad that she’d brought water, as this was going to take more effort than she’d anticipated.

Man did she miss all the hard-earned strength and especially  _endurance_ , of the body she had left behind. 

This was not going to be fun.  
  
But then, she wasn’t here to have fun.  
  
She was, she reminded herself, here for a _purpose._

She made her way as quickly as she could down to the basement, keeping an eye out for any hypothetical monsters or guard-robots or even troopers, but it really _had_ been abandoned so thoroughly that the only signs of life seemed to be some dry mouse droppings and old spiderwebs. Which made her glad she’d thought to bring the mask; none of this stale air or anything in it was something she wanted to breathe in without some filtering.

She couldn’t help but think about what, or rather who, was waiting for her in the basement. How this was where he’d been stuck, sleeping for years. Alone.  
  
It gave her a lonely pang of empathy.

And then, funnily enough, it ticked her off.  
  
Not just that he’d been shoved here, no; the fact that he’d just _accepted_ it.

Well.  
  
She’d see about that, wouldn’t she?  
  
She was surprised to find the coffin to be _hinged_ this time; last time —the time that was supposedly in the nebulous future, years from now— it had just been chained in place, hadn’t it? Had Hojo really gone back and put him in _another_ coffin, or was her memory faulty here? What in the hell...?

Oh well. She eyed her crowbar and bolt cutters, before putting them both aside. Technically this made it easier, so who was she to complain?  
  
Funny how a future, traumatized Cloud’s mood swings —and her being fed up with him locking himself in his room and refusing to talk with her for a little too long and one too many times— gave her the solution for a similar problem with Vincent, years before Cloud’s trauma would even have a chance to happen yet.

She had to root around for a long, sturdy-looking nail, but eventually she found one.   
  
And luckily she’d already brought a hammer and lucky, _lucky_ her, she didn’t care if she damaged the trim on this stupid casket.

She maneuvered the nail in place under the first hinge-pin.

A few rough whacks had it popping up.

Excellent.  
  
As she reached for the flathead screwdriver, she could swear she heard a tiny, subtle shift from inside the coffin.  
  
She smirked. So. She had the right one, then.

She leveraged the first hinge’s pin out, and then started on the second, making quick work of it now that she was in the groove of things.

She tossed both pins to the side, letting them clang against the stone.

A deep voice, muffled from within the coffin, began to utter:  
  
_“Who dares disturb —”_

She didn’t let him finish.

Why would she? She knew _exactly_ what melodramatic line he was about to spew, and she had no patience for it at the moment.  
  
Instead, she _yanked_ the freaking lid right up. Gave it a swift, hard kick —she felt the recoil in her bones the way she hadn’t in years, but she didn’t give a damn at this point so long as the sucker was _open—_  and was satisfied to see it crash unceremoniously to the other side of the coffin, lock torn right off, no codes or keys necessary.

A pair of crimson eyes stared at her in muted, dull, _confused_ shock.  
  
She met that gaze.  
  
She pulled her dust mask down.  
  
And then...she  _grinned._  
  
“Rise and shine, Valentine!” she said firmly.  “We’ve got _work_ to do.”  
  
  



End file.
